Wake up bright and early for a Sunday hike is exactly what you want to do after a costume ball at the LACMA, right? Well, it turned out to be worth it!
It was a great day for hiking, last year when we did this hike it was hot, it was a beautiful hiking day today!
I think this looks like a shark, what ya think?
Looking out over the canyon with the pacific in the background.
We met Coby on our way back!
Got up early to explore the Red Rock Canyon Park.
I thought this was a sign of aliens, but it turned out to be ants.
Whenever we see stairs, we have to explore, even if its off our paths!
A bunch of caves!
We have a book that guides us on our hikes. The book is not that great though, and we get lost on almost every hike. We took a detour of a mile or so before we found the sign!
We think this might be THE red rock.
Snack break on the top before it was tine to head back.
Thursday was the official day of fall, and today was the hottest day of the year so far! It doesnt say much, cos this summer has been weird, but it was over 100 degrees inland and in the 90’s by the beaches. We made a stupid decision to go on a hike today – why wouldn’t you? It’s the hottest day of the year! We made a re-visit to the Deer Valley Loop.
Just a mile into the hike we were starting to overheat and had to do plenty of stops in the shade.
The burnt down house is still (not) there.
The views are still stunning, but it was way to hot to enjoy it.
After a bunch of sweating and panting and thinking we’re all gonna die from a heart attack, we decided to cut the hike short, we were just gonna hit the high peak before turning around, not do the actual loop.
I was tired this morning at 4:30am when the alarm went off, but we had a hike to do and it was all professionally arranged so we had to be there early to sign off our lives.
It was a lot of people to go through, but after a bit of waiting around, off we went.
We had to cross a creek 6 times, everyone was trying to figure out if we eventually could cross the creek and still stay wet.
It was an easy hike, but since it was such a big group of people, we sat down after 2.5miles/1hour, to let everyone catch up.
By the 3rd time we had to cross the creek, everybody knew there was no way of even trying to keep dry, just walked straight through. It was actually kind of nice as the heat had started to pick up.
Clear water! Looks like were somewhere else, not in dirty Los Angeles.
After 2 hours of a fairly easy hike, we reached our goal, the bridge to nowhere. 
Some people decided to do a bungee jump off the bridge, some people decided to sign up their brother to do a bungee jump. I made a bungee in New Zealand 9 years ago and promised myself I’d only do another jump if I got paid to do it.
Looking down at the cliffs where they soon will throw themselves out over.
We who did not jumped waled down to the creek to chill and watch the crazy people from a different view. The water looked super cold, but it wasnt cold at all and it was super nice to cool off in the heat.
And so did the cow, with style!
Cooling down before the 2 hour hike back to the cars.
I never wanted to go to bed last night, so much to chat about! But when everyone else was tucked up in bed and I only heard some occasional mhmm from the bunk beds, I thought it might be time.
Due to the heavy snowfall, even more lifts were closed this morning. We wanted to get to one part of the mountain to another. You can usually do this by a chairlift that was closed today, or by going all the way down to the base and go up with another lift. We didnt want to go down and stand in line again, it’d be a lot quicker if we just traversed around that peak… We asked the ski patrol where we could hike and ski, they said we could go anywhere we wanted expect for one peak that he pointed out for us. He also told us to YouTube why:
Tagging the mountain is always fun!
The wind picked up during the night so the first couple of runs of the day were a little wind packed.
Magnus doing the classic “did I hit a rock?” check.
We soon found a face that looked good with soft snow, a quick 30 minutes hike up and off we go!
We like leaving our stamp in the snow, as you can see, there where still plenty of mountain to rip up!
After lunch we though that this was a good peak to hike.
We took the lift as high up as we could get, signed off our lives on a document and off we went to the words of “Loco gringos” echoing in our heads. 
As always, we are well prepared with plenty of water and snacks for the hike… or not. But we made it to the top, the hike itself was not so hard, but the altitude and the thin air make me feel like I have a lung capacity of a 70 year old that’s been smoking all her life. 
The Andes
Magnus was the first one to click in the skis and throw himself out.
Johan was next.
And then Geico
He made a small tumble, but was soon back on his feet.
After this amazing run it was time to call it a day, we had planned to head down south to a different mountain to ski on tomorrow. We only had one last long run in the groomed tracks to get down to the car. My legs were so tired I had to make plenty of stops, when your legs are tired, there are two ways to get down: you either go super slow, making many 180 turns, or you just keep your head up and make a straight line down the mountain without doing any turns. The later is only recommended if you know the mountain well, or if it is fairly empty so you don’t have to be a responsible skier and be aware of co-skiers. I did a combination of both. During one of my many stops, Magnus came up me to asking “Man, can you feel the burn in your thighs?” -I was to tired to even come down in position to get the burns in my thighs! But I made it down safe and in one piece.
But since we are the Tetris generation, we managed to squeeze everything in and still have room for 4 people.
Or 3.5 at least. We only had an 8 or so hours trip ahead of us, so it didn’t matter if one of us only could get one cheek down, as long as the driver was comfortable!
Good Bye Las Lenas, you were awesome to us!
We had a fairly long trip ahead of us. We had planned according to the maps, that it would take us approximately 9 hours to get down to San Martin from Las Lenas on Ruta 40. If we were lucky enough, we would get there before midnight, and if anything came up along the way, we would only be a couple of hours away and we could to the last leg tomorrow morning and still have plenty of time to ski the next day. 
Or that a little later, the road would turn into a dirt road that was so bumpy you thought the car would shake apart if you went faster than 40km/h?
But wait, we forgot about lift tickets… Magnus and Johan already had theirs as they got to Las Lenas a couple of days earlier, but me and Danny still had to buy ours, the problem though was that we were now at the hotel, and we had to buy ticket from the office two lifts away. 
The rest of us had enough though and stopped where we were letting him hike up the rest by himself.
Me at the in-run, waiting to do the first turn of the season!
Which ended like this…
I ate it in the very first turn 🙁 So much snow though that it didn’t hurt. A lot of people laugh when they see a ski or two up in the air, but it is a technique to master to fall correctly… you want to get the ski’s up as soon as possible to prevent to get all tangled up, break a leg or loose a ski in waist deep powder that if you are lucky will find two ours later. Got myself organized and managed to stay on my feet for the rest of the run. 30 minutes up and 30 seconds down, but it is so worth it!
Johan blazing down the mountain.
The Las Lenas ski resort surrounded by the Andes.
Happy geico after a good run!
We checked out the other side of the mountain after lunch, the lift took us up to the peak, but we traversed over to where the snow seemed better, we just had to cross some rocky patches.
Lots of snow!
After ski beer at the hotel, since I was the first one to fall, I had to buy the first beer.
We’d heard there were a supermarket somewhere closed by, so after the beer, we all jumped in the car, hunting for the market. We had a feeling it was located behind a gate so when the gate opened for a car, we sneaked in behind. This was a high alert signal for a security guard who came running towards us, waiving his arms and gave us time out gestures. Someone from the backseat shouted FLOOR IT! But Magnus, the designated driver would not listen and politely stopped. Here we go again… Spanish? No habla! English? What’s that? Supermarcado, supermarcado! – That didn’t work either, so it was just for us to turn around with the tail behind our legs. 
We drove up to the Wind Wolves wild life preserve outside Bakersfield a couple of hours north of Los Angeles. We took a little detour to get there but finally made it!
Before we explored the preserve, we checked out the kiosk to find out what to be aware of… poison oak and snakes this time.
We were all very excited to start the hike, A found something to poke right away!
The soundtrack of the day was of course the Sound of Music.
Orange break!
So close to the snow! I just wish all the hills were covered!
We ended the hike with a picnic, good times!
After the cranky pants hike a few weeks ago, we decided to do a short hike this weekend.
Yes, the snow is there far far away, just waiting for me to pay a visit!
